By ART THIEL, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, August 10, 2004

ATHENS -- The chief of security for the U.S. Olympic Committee tried to allay fears about the Summer Games in Athens by explaining that Greek domestic protesters unaffiliated with international terrorists often will set off small explosives, more or less to provoke instead of maim.

Sort of like Super Bowl halftimes, without the nipple adornments.

"They often call ahead," said Larry Buendorf, who has been in charge of Olympic security for 11 years, "so that buildings can be evacuated and no one gets hurt."

Hey, Larry. Here's my 800 number. Don't be shy about handing it out.

Buendorf, a former Secret Service agent, was addressing a media summit that brought Olympic athletes to New York for interviews. His May chat followed by a few days some small detonations next to an Athens police station. Apparently he figured that distinguishing between types of explosions would generate comfort.

Of course, it didn't. But then, what words would?

Anyone who has read a newspaper since Sept. 11, 2001, knows that words are no shield against the new realities. One of those realities is that America has squandered the worldwide sympathy vote with its invasion of Iraq. And the Summer Games represents the first large-scale, high-profile gathering of ordinary Americans outside the United States since the pre-emptive takeover of a sovereign state.

Bill Martin, the acting president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, put it this way: "We are not the favorite kid in the world. These are going to be tough Games for us."

For anyone there, this Olympiad will be known as the Games of Looking Over One's Shoulder.

Among American athletes, there have been a few who have declined to even try, admitting that security fears will keep them home. But the vast majority seems to reflect the view of Aretha Hill, the University of Washington grad who recently won the women's discus at the U.S. track and field trials.

"I know they're gonna take really good care of us," she told The Sacramento Bee. "I have no worries."

If that sounds a bit naïve, the USOC and the various sports federations have made quiet suggestions that athletes and team officials think about what they wear in public and how they behave in fields and arenas. That predictably provoked dismay from the political right because the idea of moderation suggests there must be shame in declaring American-ness.

Regardless of one's political persuasion, it's unlikely to affect whether or where anything goes boom. Where behavior may be influential is how the American delegation will be received at the venues and on the streets by their Greek hosts.

Upon the invasion of Iraq, one of the largest spontaneous protests in the world occurred in Athens. The invasion was the latest in a string of American government actions over the last quarter century that was not received well in Greece.

While much of the attention to history in the run-up to these Games has focused on the origins of the Olympics in Greek antiquity, national attitudes are shaped far more by the experiences of the living, which for the oldest includes the horror of Nazi occupation during World War II.

Grateful as were the Greeks were for the United States and Allied liberation, the issue of occupation is sensitive in a country that has been overrun by several outside empires. It's part of why Greeks tend to be pro-Palestinian -- they know the feeling of having little control over the national fate.

In the 1974 war between Greece and Turkey over the island nation of Cyprus, the United States was officially neutral, but many Greeks believed the Americans tacitly sided with the Turks. In the more recent fighting in the Balkans, Greeks were furious with the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Serbia, which like Greece, is overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian.

So there are grounds for hard feelings. But in the view of Stamatis Vokos, a Seattle Pacific University professor of physics who also has taught at the University of Washington, his countrymen are able to draw some distinctions.

"Greeks really do love the American people," said Vokos, who returned July 28 from his homeland after a six-week stay. "They view Americans as exuberant, youthful and energetic. But there is a deep-seated mistrust of the American government."

Asked whether hosting Americans while their army occupies Iraq was something akin to indulging the belligerent uncle at a holiday dinner, Vokos, who left Athens at 17 to study in England before coming to the United States in 1984, changed the analogy.

"It's more like young cousin Jack," he said. "He's rash and naïve. Not bad, but he just doesn't understand much.

"In the Greek view, you simply don't invade a sovereign state."

Regarding the other major sweat about the Greek Olympics, the completion of facilities, Vokos said he bore witness to a remarkable transformation in his six-week visit. As just one example, when he arrived, he noticed that the media housing in a village next to the Olympic Stadium had barely begun construction. He presumed the worst, that it could never be done in time.

As he passed by the site just before his departure, the project was complete.

"I felt very proud," he said. "Even a sense of awe. There has always been a tendency to do things at the last minute. But once fully engaged, the Greeks can do anything."

Even beyond the frenzy to the Opening Ceremonies Friday, the Greeks are being asked to complete a more formidable task -- setting aside old grudges for the sake of a sports festival.

It was one of the most noble hallmarks of the ancient Games, when wars stopped every four years for the trek to Olympia.

If the Greeks manage to help that history repeat in 2004, no one will care that the landscaping around the velodrome was a little messy.